At last the patience of beautiful graphics fans has been rewarded: Nvidia has finally rolled out their response to AMD’s “Tahiti”. And today we are proud to present a new GK104 graphics processor on “Kepler” architecture and the first graphics card based on it.

New Antialiasing Algorithms – FXAA and TXAA

Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing or FXAA is a post-processing shader that implements an antialiasing algorithm which works faster than the classic MSAA, consumes fewer resources, and generally delivers higher quality of antialiasing. The only problem is that it had to be integrated into the game engine. With the new generation of Nvidia cards, however, this algorithm is part of the graphics card driver and can be enabled in most games, even if they do not explicitly support it.

TXAA is a more sophisticated algorithm. Based on hardware MSAA, it uses a software filter to deliver high temporal antialiasing quality at a small performance hit.

Two TXAA modes have been declared so far. TXAA1 is somewhat better in quality than 8x MSAA but comparable to 2xMSAA in terms of consumed resources. TXAA2 is superior to MSAA algorithms in quality and comparable to 4x MSAA in terms of resources.

These antialiasing methods will be available not only with the new Kepler-based graphics cards but also with the older Fermi-based solutions (GeForce GTX 4xxx and GTX 5xx series).